Fox River. Emilie Richards

She stifled a cry, then felt for her bearings. She had stumbled over a plant of some sort, a small tree in a pot. An interior decorator’s vision.

      She didn’t linger. She used the pot to steady herself and got to her feet. She had fallen and lived through it. She had gotten back up. She was moving. She might trip again. She would keep moving.

      Nearly at the end of the second hallway, she heard a warning just before she stumbled over what felt like the edge of a carpet and sprawled chest down on the floor. This time it took her a moment to catch her breath. Pain shot through her right knee, but before she could find her way to her feet, she felt strong arms helping her up.

      “Damn it!” Karen sounded as if she wanted to weep. “I don’t care if I lose my job. There have to be better places to work. If your mother’s gone, I’ll drive you home myself. I have a little boy at home. I just didn’t want—”

      Julia felt for Karen’s hands. “I’m going to need help. Come with me. At least until you can find a job you like better.”

      “I’d like flipping hamburgers better than this.”

      “Let’s go find my mother.”

      “Can you make the stairs?”

      Julia managed a smile. “I’ll do anything to get out of here.”

      “Don’t forget I’ll have my arm around you. Just put one foot in front of the other.”

      Julia found that was a lot easier with Karen walking beside her.

      4

      The inmates at Ludwell State Prison left Christian Carver alone. That hadn’t always been true. When he had arrived as a frightened twenty-three-year-old, he had snagged more than his share of attention. Athletic and strong, he was also lean-hipped and slim. And at twenty-three Christian hadn’t yet learned the importance of feeling nothing, so that he truly had nothing to hide.

      In a matter of months he had learned—the hard way—everything he needed to survive a life sentence. Who to befriend and who not to let out of his sight. How to tolerate the noise and the smell. How to find some common denominator with men who had broken into houses or set them ablaze, maniacs who had murdered old women and raped small children. The right balance between anger and hate, so that he could endure but not be consumed by the fire within him.

      He had made a peace of sorts with his life. One of the guards had taken an interest in young Christian’s welfare and moved him into a cell with an old man convicted of murdering his wife. Alf Johnson had smothered his beloved Doris at her own request when the cancer eating away her lungs made every breath a torment. In the pre-Kevorkian days of Alf’s trial, Doris’s death had simply been premeditated murder.

      Alf had used his years in prison to pursue the education his life on the outside had never allowed, and he had taken the young man under his wing. Before his death a year later, he’d taught Christian how to have a life behind bars, as well as one important motto to live by.

      Only one man can imprison your spirit.

      Now, as always, Christian was employing everything he’d learned.

      “I don’t give advice.” Christian examined the golden retriever puppy at his feet. Seesaw had a coat as shiny as polished nuggets and liquid brown eyes that noticed absolutely everything. “Seesaw, sit.”

      The dog sat obediently, her plump puppy body wiggling with pent-up energy. But Seesaw stayed where she was, despite instincts that told her otherwise.

      Christian reached down to pet and praise her.

      The man beside him spoke. “I don’t need advice, man. I just need to know how to get Tyrell off my back.”

      “Same thing.” Christian snapped the leash on Seesaw’s collar. “Heel, Seesaw.”

      “Hey, you been here a long time—”

      Christian straightened. “And I’m going to be here a lot longer. So I know better than to say anything that might get me in trouble.”

      “How’d telling me what to do get you in trouble?” The young man walked beside Christian as he and Seesaw slowly paced the indoor track that the prison dog trainers used for walking their canine charges. Timbo Baines was new to Ludwell, young, black and terrified. He had chosen Christian as his mentor, a job Christian didn’t want but wasn’t quite embittered enough to refuse.

      “Look, Timbo. Tyrell has friends here. Friends talk to friends. You’ll talk to some of them. You’ll mention me.”

      “So what if I just stay out of his way?”

      “Make it a priority.” Christian stopped to gently scold the puppy, who was beginning to strain at the leash. “He has a short attention span.”

      “He? I thought Seesaw was a girl.”

      “Not Seesaw. Tyrell.”

      “Yeah? Oh, yeah. I get it. Okay.”

      “Think you can take over? Don’t raise your voice. Praise her if she does what you want her to. Don’t jerk on the leash.”

      “Don’t know how I got stuck training dogs.”

      “Guess you were just lucky.” As well as convicted for selling cocaine to middle-class teenagers who’d been sight-seeing in Richmond’s inner city.

      Christian started back toward the kennel.

      “Christian?”

      He hadn’t noticed the Reverend Bertha Petersen at the end of the first run. An overweight woman in her fifties, she wore jeans and a sweatshirt with a bandanna covering her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair. A barrel-chested guard stood stiffly nearby, watching every move Christian made.

      Christian approached her, stopping several yards away so as not to worry him. “Hello, Pastor. We weren’t expecting you.”

      “It’s good to see you. How are the new puppies?”

      “It’s too early to tell. But no real problems so far. The Lab’s a little excitable. She may calm down, but we’ll watch her.”

      Bertha Petersen was the director of Pets and Prisoners Together and an ordained minister in a small fundamentalist sect with a long name. While many of her cohorts were busily converting the heathen, Bertha had turned her own considerable energy to good works.

      The purpose of Pets and Prisoners was to raise and train helping dogs for the physically or mentally challenged. Ludwell was the first prison in the program to train dogs for the blind, turning over two dozen a year to organizations that did the final portion of the training and placed them. Christian had been in charge of the Ludwell program for two years.

      “So, did you just drop by to check on us?”

      “I like to keep up with everybody if I can.” Bertha’s gaze traveled to the guard, then back to Christian. “Why don’t you show me the dogs in training? How many do you have right now?”

      Ludwell had two separate programs in progress. A new program, of which Seesaw was a part, evaluated puppies who had been bred to become guide dogs. The second and more established, brought in young dogs who had already been socialized by a host family and trained in good manners and family routine. They received intensive training from the prison staff for three months before they were passed on to one of several programs.

      Christian would have liked to finish the training of each animal, but the final month involved working with the dog’s new master, often on city streets. And no one felt safe sending the blind to a prison or prisoners to the blind.

      But what did that matter compared to everything else the men were denied?

      “We have four dogs left,” Christian told the pastor. “We started this session with ten.”

      She turned to the guard. “Officer, we’re going over to the other kennel. Will that